The Photo Palace Bus is a project dedicated to the art of analog photography. Darkroom and presentation area are housed in a 35ft school bus and offer a range of educational and artistic opportunities.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Darkroom is 95% done! Plus other Photo Palace news.

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for being absent or the past few days - all the efforts went into finishing the darkroom and so for your viewing pleasure here are three photos of the various parts of it in the process of being built.

Drying racks and future dry and wet counter spaces.

Print washing sink (custom made by us to fit one 16x20 and one 11x14 archival washers and the big sink for trays (we went with a standard 6ft sink that theoretically can hold trays up to 20x24)

And these are the guts of our enlarging stations (I tried to make as many drawers as I had patience for as there is always a ton of small stuff needed in the darkroom like lenses, negative carriers, etc.)

And here are three images of what the darkroom looks like tonight as we finish up work on it.

There are still a few things to do - safe lights need to be wired and placed, ventilation is waiting to be hooked up to the switches (that's hopefully going to get done right after I press 'publish' on this post) and a couple of faucets need to be placed in the sinks. Otherwise it's ready to be a very cozy creative cave.

In other news the decision was made to launch on our maiden journey much sooner than previously planned. We are going to rough it on this trip and have no bedrooms. We could spend the summer working on the second story (and it would not be out of our realm of capabilities), BUT that would leave Ryan and me in a dire financial situation with no finds to actually go anywhere and start making art and spreading the joy of gelatin silver across the country. So! The launch date has been moved up and is now set to be around June 8th (give or take a day or two). The Photo Palace is taking off from the Bay Area tomorrow and am headed to San Diego for the first time. There the darkroom will be stuffed with all sorts of equipment that makes darkrooms so much fun.

Our route will be announced soon so stay tuned!

I am also completely lagging on posting a huge Thank You Post in which I will pay homage to all the wonderful folks who made the building of The Photo Palace in Bay Area possible. I am not forgetting about You guys - I just want to get a day of breathing and rest so I can put together a less rambling post to honor You in.

It's almost 3am - time for a little more coffee and some more finishing touches.

Sometimes I have dreams that I reach into my camera bag and pull out a camera, but find that it's not the right camera for the occasion (like a Polaroid when I want a Rolleiflex) - very frustrating dreams those are.... I think the best photo-dreams I remember having were the ones then I notice a striking light quality (usually dawn or sunset hour, but sometimes slightly hazy overcast looks beautiful in my dreams) and actually have a camera that can do justice to the moment... A while ago I had one of those dreams, but was slightly sad because I thought to myself: "This would be perfect for Kodachrome but they don't make it many more...."

About

The Photo Palace Bus is a traveling darkroom dedicated to traditional photography. Its aim is propagation of knowledge related to historic photographic techniques through cross-country art exhibits, lectures and demonstrations.